Battery industry veterans are coming together to launch Peak Energy, which aims to mass-produce giant batteries to even out production fluctuations from renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power generators.

As Peak Energy scales up existing battery technology, they don’t consider themselves a traditional “startup.”

Silicon Valley startups typically spend 10 years in the lab, then come up with a better mousetrap and go to market. As Cameron Dales, president and chief commercial officer of Peak Energy, told in a video interview Friday, “we’re completely the opposite.”

A technology company (yet to be selected) that is already an expert in battery technology but lacks the capability to scale manufacturing will be partnered with Peak Energy.

In the battery industry, it turns out that the rarest commodity is not the technology – there are many excellent ideas at academic labs and startups – but rather the ability to scale to manufacturing,” CEO Landon Mossburg told. There are a lot of ‘breakthrough battery technology’ announcements but there are very few companies who actually take their products to market due to the difficulty of manufacturing scale up.”  

Peak Energy launched in June and announced on Wednesday a $10 million funding round led by Eclipse, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Reichow previously worked at Tesla for more than five years, first overseeing battery, motor, and electronics manufacturing, then leading global manufacturing. In addition, TDK Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the Tokyo-based multinational electronics company, is participating in the funding round.

“Storage is the number one problem we face when it comes to expanding renewable energy sources,” Reichow told. Lithium-ion and other technologies must be used to solve this problem, but their prices are not yet enabling society to scale across sectors in a cost-effective manner.”

There will be an increase in demand for grid-scale storage in the future. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, battery storage capacity will grow from 9 gigawatts in 2022 to 49 gigawatts in 2030, then to 247 gigawatts in 2050. Assuming no further changes in U.S. policy throughout the projection period, that’s a baseline projection that includes the Inflation Reduction Act.